Sustainable tuna fishery celebrates partnerships

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Over the past 25 years, successful Pacific Ocean fisheries partnerships supported the world’s largest tuna fishery—nearly 60 per cent of global tuna catch — to transform from a potentially unsustainable fishery to one of the most effectively managed large-scale fisheries in the world.

The story of the partnership’s success is celebrated on World Tuna Day yesterday (2 May 2022) with the launch of a 45-page booklet, which tells how the partners worked with Pacific Island nations to ensure sustainable tuna stocks into the foreseeable future.

Coordinator of the Oceanic Fisheries Management Projects (OFMPs) from 2015 to 2021, Hugh Walton, says the story is in a sense one of ‘David and Goliath’ in the fisheries world: “it is a story of transformational change in fisheries management involving Pacific Small Island Developing States, and the wider powers of fisheries operators.”

The OFMPs were financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and overseen at various times by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. They were implemented by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) in collaboration with its member countries, the Pacific Community’s Oceanic Fisheries Programme and the Office of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA). 

The e-booklet can be viewed at: https://indd.adobe.com/view/8067a9d6-0d6a-440b-b47e-420c4e66532d. It can be downloaded from this site as a PDF.